Kinsey and Me (13 page)

a poison that leaves no trace

T
HE WOMAN WAS
waiting outside my office when I arrived that morning. She was short and quite plump,
wearing jeans in a size I’ve never seen on the rack. Her blouse was tunic-length,
ostensibly to disguise her considerable rear end. Someone must have told her never
to wear horizontal stripes, so the bold red-and-blue bands ran diagonally across her
torso with a dizzying effect. Big red canvas tote, matching canvas wedgies. Her face
was round, seamless, and smooth, her hair a uniformly dark shade that suggested a
rinse. She might have been any age between forty and sixty. “You’re not Kinsey Millhone,”
she said as I approached.

“Actually, I am. Would you like to come in?” I unlocked the door and stepped back
so she could pass in front of me. She was giving me the once-over, as if my appearance
was as remarkable to her as hers was to me.

She took a seat, keeping her tote squarely on her lap. I went around to my side of
the desk, pausing to open the French doors before I sat down. “What can I help you
with?”

She stared at me openly. “Well, I don’t know. I thought you’d be a man. What kind
of name is Kinsey? I never heard such a thing.”

“My mother’s maiden name. I take it you’re in the market for a private investigator.”

“I guess you could say that. I’m Shirese Dunaway, but everybody calls me Sis. Exactly
how long have you been doing this?” Her tone was a perfect mating of skepticism and
distrust.

“Six years in May. I was with the police department for two years before that. If
my being a woman bothers you, I can recommend another agency. It won’t offend me in
the least.”

“Well, I might as well talk to you as long as I’m here. I drove all the way up from
Orange County. You don’t charge for a consultation, I hope.”

“Not at all. My regular fee is thirty dollars an hour plus expenses, but only if I
believe I can be of help. What sort of problem are you dealing with?”

“Thirty dollars an hour! My stars. I had no idea it would cost so
much
.”

“Lawyers charge a hundred and twenty,” I said with a shrug.

“I know, but that’s in case of a lawsuit. Contingency, or whatever they call that.
Thirty dollars an
hour . . .”

I closed my mouth and let her work it out for herself. I didn’t want to get into an
argument with the woman in the first five minutes of our relationship. I tuned her
out, watching her lips move while she decided what to do.

“The problem is my sister,” she said at long last. “Here, look at this.” She handed
me a little clipping from the Santa Teresa newspaper. The death notice read: “Crispin,
Margery, beloved mother of Justine, passed away on December 10. Private arrangements.
Wynington-Blake Mortuary.”

“Nearly two months ago,” I remarked.

“Nobody even told me she was sick! That’s the point,” Sis Dunaway snapped. “I wouldn’t
know to this day if a former neighbor hadn’t spotted this and cut it out.” She tended
to speak in an indignant tone regardless of the subject.

“You just received this?”

“Well, no. It came back in January, but of course I couldn’t drop everything and rush
right up. This is the first chance I’ve had. You can probably appreciate that, upset
as I was.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “When did you last talk to Margery?”

“I don’t remember the exact date. It had to be eight or ten years back. You can imagine
my shock! To get something like this out of a clear blue sky.”

I shook my head. “Terrible,” I murmured. “Have you talked to your niece?”

She gestured dismissively. “That Justine’s a mess. Marge had her hands full with that
one,” she said. “I stopped over to her place and you should have seen the look I got.
I said, ‘Justine, whatever in the world did Margery die of?’ And you know what she
said? Said, ‘Aunt Sis, her heart give out.’ Well, I knew that was bull the minute
she said it. We have never had heart trouble in our family. . . .”

She went on for a while about what everybody’d died of: Mom, Dad, Uncle Buster, Rita
Sue. We’re talking cancer, lung disorder, an aneurysm or two. Sure enough, no heart
trouble. I was making sympathetic noises, just to keep the tale afloat until she got
to the point. I jotted down a few notes, though I never did quite understand how Rita
Sue was related. Finally, I said, “Is it your feeling there was something unusual
in your sister’s death?”

She pursed her lips and lowered her gaze. “Let’s put it this way. I can smell a rat.
I’d be willing to
bet
Justine had a hand in it.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Well, Marge had that big insurance policy. The one Harley took out in 1966. If that’s
not a motive for murder, I don’t know what is.” She sat back in her chair, content
that she’d made her case.

“Harley?”

“Her husband—until he passed on, of course. They took out policies on each other and
after he went, she kept up the premiums on hers. Justine was made the beneficiary.
Marge never remarried and with Justine on the policy, I guess she’ll get all the money
and do I don’t know what. It just doesn’t seem right. She’s been a sneak all her natural
life. A regular con artist. She’s been in jail four times! My sister talked till she
was blue in the face, but she never could get Justine to straighten up her act.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“A hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “Furthermore, them two never did get along.
Fought like cats and dogs since the day Justine was born. Competitive? My God. Always
trying to get the better of each other. Justine as good as told me they had a falling-out
not two months before her mother died! The two had not exchanged a word since the
day Marge got mad and stomped off.”

“They lived together?”

“Well, yes, until this big fight. Next thing you know, Marge is dead. You tell me
there’s not something funny going on.”

“Have you talked to the police?”

“How can I do that? I don’t have any
proof
.”

“What about the insurance company? Surely, if there were something irregular about
Marge’s death, the claims investigator would have picked up on it.”

“Oh, honey, you’d think so, but you know how it is. Once a claim’s been paid, the
insurance company doesn’t want to hear. Admit they made a mistake? Un-uhn, no thanks.
Too much trouble going back through all the paperwork. Besides, Justine would probably
turn around and sue ’em within an inch of their life. They’d rather turn a deaf ear
and write the money off.”

“When was the claim paid?”

“A week ago, they said.”

I stared at her for a moment, considering. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ms. Dunaway—”

“Call me Sis. I don’t go for that Ms. bull.”

“All right, Sis. If you’re really convinced Justine’s implicated in her mother’s death,
of course I’ll try to help. I just don’t want to waste your time.”

“I can appreciate that,” she said.

I stirred in my seat. “Look, I’ll tell you what let’s do. Why don’t you pay me for
two hours of my time. If I don’t come up with anything concrete in that period, we
can have another conversation and you can decide then if you want me to proceed.”

“Sixty dollars,” she said.

“That’s right. Two hours.”

“Well, all right. I guess I can do that.” She opened her tote and peeled six tens
off a roll of bills she’d secured with a rubber band. I wrote out an abbreviated version
of a standard contract. She said she’d be staying in town overnight and gave me the
telephone number at the motel where she’d checked in. She handed me the death notice.
I made sure I had her sister’s full name and the exact date of her death and told
her I’d be in touch.

My first stop was the Hall of Records at the Santa Teresa County Courthouse, two and
a half blocks away. I filled out a copy order, supplying the necessary information,
and paid seven bucks in cash. An hour later, I returned to pick up the certified copy
of Margery Crispin’s death certificate. Cause of death was listed as a “myocardial
infarction.” The certificate was signed by Dr. Yee, one of the contract pathologists
out at the county morgue. If Marge Crispin had been the victim of foul play, it was
hard to believe Dr. Yee wouldn’t have spotted it.

I swung back by the office, picked up my car, and drove over to Wynington-Blake, the
mortuary listed in the newspaper clipping. I asked for Mr. Sharonson, whom I’d met
when I was working on another case. He was wearing a somber charcoal-gray suit, his
tone of voice carefully modulated to reflect the solemnity of his work. When I mentioned
Marge Crispin, a shadow crossed his face.

“You remember the woman?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. He closed his mouth then, but the look he gave me was eloquent.

I wondered if funeral home employees took a loyalty oath, vowing never to divulge
a single fact about the dead. I thought I’d prime the pump a bit. Men are worse gossips
than women once you get ’em going. “Mrs. Crispin’s sister was in my office a little
while ago and she seems to think there was something . . . uh, irregular about the
woman’s death.”

I could see Mr. Sharonson formulate his response. “I wouldn’t say there was anything
‘irregular’ about the woman’s death, but there was certainly something sordid about
the circumstances.”

“Oh?” said I.

He lowered his voice, glancing around to make certain we couldn’t be overheard. “The
two were estranged. Hadn’t spoken for months as I understand it. The woman died alone
in a seedy hotel on lower State Street. She drank.”

“Nooo,” I said, conveying disapproval and disbelief.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “The police picked up the body, but she wasn’t identified for
weeks. If it hadn’t been for the article in the paper, her daughter might not have
ever known.”

“What article?”

“Oh, you know the one. There’s that columnist for the local paper who does all those
articles about the homeless. He did a write-up about the poor woman. ‘Alone in Death’
I think it was called. He talked about how pathetic this woman was. Apparently, when
Ms. Crispin read the article, she began to suspect it might be her mother. That’s
when she went out there to take a look.”

“Must have been a shock,” I said. “The woman did die of natural causes?”

“Oh, yes.”

“No evidence of trauma, foul play, anything like that?”

“No, no, no. I tended her myself and I know they ran toxicology tests. I guess at
first they thought it might be acute alcohol poisoning, but it turned out to be her
heart.”

I quizzed him on a number of possibilities, but I couldn’t come up with anything out
of the ordinary. I thanked him for his time, got back in my car, and drove over to
the trailer park where Justine Crispin lived.

The trailer itself had seen better days. It was moored in a dirt patch with a wooden
crate for an outside step. I knocked on the door, which opened about an inch to show
a short strip of round face peering out at me. “Yes?”

“Are you Justine Crispin?”

“Yes.”

“I hope I’m not bothering you. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m an old friend of your
mother’s and I just heard she passed away.”

The silence was cautious. “Who’d you hear that from?”

I showed her the clipping. “Someone sent me this. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t
even know she was sick.”

Justine’s eyes darkened with suspicion. “When did you see her last?”

I did my best to imitate Sis Dunaway’s folksy tone. “Oh, gee. Must have been last
summer. I moved away in June and it was probably sometime around then because I remember
giving her my address. It was awfully sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Her heart give out.”

“Well, the poor thing, and she was such a love.” I wondered if I’d laid it on too
thick. Justine was staring at me like I’d come to the wrong place. “Would you happen
to know if she got my last note?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Because I wasn’t sure what to do about the money.”

“She owed you money?”

“No, no. I owed
her
—which is why I wrote.”

Justine hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Your mother is Marge Crispin, isn’t she?”

Justine blinked. “How much money did you owe her?”

“Well, it wasn’t much,” I said, with embarrassment. “Six hundred dollars, but she
was such a doll to lend it to me and then I felt so bad when I couldn’t pay her back
right away. I asked her if I could wait and pay her this month, but then I never heard.
Now I don’t know what to do.”

I could sense the shift in her attitude. Greed seems to do that in record time. “You
could pay it to me and I could see it went into her estate,” she said helpfully.

“Oh, I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “You want to come in?”

“I shouldn’t. You’re probably busy and you’ve already been so nice. . . .”

“I can take a few minutes.”

Justine held the door open and I stepped into the trailer, where I got my first clear
look at her. This girl was probably thirty pounds overweight with listless brown hair
pulled into an oily ponytail. Like Sis, she was decked out in a pair of jeans, with
an oversize T-shirt hanging almost to her knees. It was clear big butts ran in the
family. She shoved some junk aside so I could sit down on the banquette, a fancy word
for the ripped plastic seat that extended along one wall in the kitchenette.